Air traffic control (“ATC”) centers are used at airports to coordinate aircraft traffic around the airport. Pilots and/or flight crew are able to communicate with air traffic controllers stationed at air traffic control centers in a number of ways, including orally via two way radio communication and textually via data link applications hosted by avionics computers. An example data link application is a Controller Pilot Data Link Communications application. Though this disclosure focuses on pilot and/or flight crew interactions with air traffic controllers via the Controller Pilot Data Link Communications application, it also applies to air traffic controllers stationed at an air traffic control center and operators of other vehicles and control centers. In current Controller Pilot Data Link Communications applications, textual messages are exchanged between pilots and/or flight crew onboard an aircraft and air traffic controllers stationed at an air traffic control center through a data link established between the aircraft and the air traffic control center. The data link is typically established via two way communication between wireless radio transceivers.
The data link facilitates two-way traffic between the pilots and/or flight crew onboard the aircraft and the air traffic controllers stationed at air traffic control centers, including uplink messages and downlink messages. Uplink messages are messages received by pilots and/or flight crew onboard aircraft from air traffic controllers stationed at air traffic control centers. Downlink messages are messages sent from pilots and/or flight crew onboard aircraft to air traffic controllers stationed at air traffic control centers. Both uplink messages and downlink messages can be questions, answers, statements, commands, etc. Downlink messages are sometimes predefined messages, to which the pilots and/or flight crew add data values. A dialogue is a series of interconnected uplink and downlink messages. For example, a simple dialogue includes a question received at the aircraft in an uplink message and a response sent from the aircraft in a downlink message. When uplink messages are received at the aircraft, they are typically displayed to the pilot and/or flight crew and stored in a message log. Typically, the uplink messages can be responded to by pilot and/or flight crew by pressing one of several buttons indicating predefined responses such as ACCEPT, REJECT, STANDBY, or REPORT. The message log is typically a database containing all the uplink and downlink messages with associated message details and status information.
To minimize the time uplink messages remain unanswered by a pilot and/or flight crew onboard an aircraft, a termination timer, receiver (“TTR timer”) timer is typically setup for uplink messages received at the aircraft. Once a TTR timer expires for a particular uplink message, the message dialogue is closed and the message can no longer be responded to without first finding it in a message log. The message status is changed to EXPIRED in the message log. Sometimes, pilots and/or flight crew input a STANDBY response to messages to reset or add time to the TTR timer.